


a night like this

by lackingother



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Character Study, Emptiness, Experimental Style, Gen, Hurt, Insomnia, Jason Todd is Alive, Late Night Conversations, References to Depression, Short, author wrote this in the spur of the moment, dick is somewhat exasperated, is that rhetorical?, jason is not that alone, philosophical undertones, with hints of existential dread
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-19
Updated: 2018-09-19
Packaged: 2019-07-14 04:16:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16032794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lackingother/pseuds/lackingother
Summary: No longer does Jason understand what it means to rest, other than an elusive grasp on the death; laying himself down to sleep has too many complications, now. Too many implications.





	a night like this

There's something unique to the world at early hours, when there's just this terrible silence on the streets. People have long sunken away into the dark, fallen into an enigma called sleep.

An enigma that escapes him, now.

No longer does Jason understand what it means to rest, other than an elusive grasp on the death; laying himself down to sleep has too many complications, now. Too many implications.

Chilled thoughts and terrible silence; such are the things he looks forward to, when the world slips from him and he becomes only a wisp. A skewed memory in time, forgotten. Disconnect is not surprising, though the lack of it is.

“You're up late,” a voice says, somewhere near him.

“Part of the job,” replies Jason, unmoved, still like his thoughts.

“Couldn't sleep?” Dick says, knowingly, as blue steps into peripheral view. Jason hates his perceptiveness.

“What is sleep but an imitation of death,” answers the other man, evasive in his mocking, reciting the words like he would Dante--callously. He steps off the roof.

The air bruises ice against his face, pierces his nerves; winter soothes his mind, chills the ghosts of his brain. Falling frees the force of regret, and nostalgia, from his bones. It livens him, lifts his heavy limbs like naked wings. Gravity grants him lightness.

Irony--the key to his existence.

A hook whistles by him, and he feels a sharp arm lace around his midsection. Sharp, a particular edge to the intent movement, graceless in its urgency. He is drawn upward.

Jason moves almost effortlessly with Dick, the ordinary retention of his frame nearly nonexistent. There is an art to following, as there is to leading. He is so good at running.

“Do you have a death wish?” Dick asks the rhetorical question once they touch ground, which Jason answers anyway.

“Not really,” says he, “unless you count going neck to neck with the criminally insane every night.”

The older man looks pointedly at him.

“Is it so hard, to live?”, he says.

“Is it so hard, to die?”, contends the other.  

Blue levels with red, then, “to live is to die, just a little.”

Jason turns to, then away, facing the depth of the city, smiling a bit: “are we rivaling philosophies, now?”

“It's not hard, with you.” Dick is smiling, too.

Distant from them, the sky wakes with a slow light. Night suspends with the stars for a moment longer, till that terrible silence begins to fade, and the veil seems to lift, just a little.

Across the street, there's a shuddering of opened windows, clattering of pans, a repetition of footsteps. Voices begin to call across black asphalt, curses and litanies that spring from the cracks. There is a stirring; a gentle churning of light, and dark.

“I know a place,” begins Jason.

 

 

 


End file.
